Ubuntu bakes Amazon search results into OS to raise cash

The new version of Ubuntu Linux slated for release in October introduces a feature that some users claim is at worst a violation of privacy or, at best, generally annoying. Ubuntu 12.10 introduces search results from Amazon into the Dash. That means you could be searching for a file or application on your computer and get shopping results under a "more suggestions" section after your general results.

Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth took to his blog yesterday to defend the move, saying the "Home Lens of the Dash should let you find *anything* anywhere." Adding Amazon results is just the first step in expanding the scope of Dash searches from the user's computer to the entire Web, a sensible place to start as Amazon affiliate links will help Canonical fund the development of Ubuntu. "We picked Amazon as a first place to start because most of our users are also regular users of Amazon, and it pays us to make your Amazon journey get off to a faster start," Shuttleworth wrote.

In response to accusations of privacy violations, Shuttleworth wrote, "We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already." The "we have root" statement raised some more hackles in the comments section of Shuttleworth's blog. Explaining what he meant, Shuttleworth said, "Every package update installs as root."

Shuttleworth also noted that users can use hotkeys to limit search results to local results, such as just applications, or remove the new functionality entirely. The terminal command to do so is "apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping."

In practice, it's not quite as intrusive as, say, the "special offers" on Amazon's Kindle Fire. But user complaints have increased over the past few days as people test out the prerelease version of 12.10. One user filed a bug report suggesting that Amazon make shopping results a separate, opt-in portion of the Dash. Not everyone hates it—a commenter on Shuttleworth's blog wrote, "I only wish I’d known about this before spending £400 odd quid on Amazon last week, I would have affiliated it to Ubuntu."

OMGUbuntu has more on how the Amazon shopping lens works in practice, including screenshots. In addition to the shopping results, the launcher bar in Ubuntu 12.10 comes preinstalled with an Amazon Web app link, the site also reports. But getting rid of it is as easy as dragging the icon to the trash.

Promoted Comments

As a fundraiser it's a pretty good idea - I have some amazon affiliate links on the site for an app I wrote, and I'm amazed at how broadly amazon defines "purchased via your link and thus eligible for the affiliate program". The stuff I link to are phones, phone holders, gps units, obd2 readers, etc, but I often end up getting my affiliate kickbacks for completely unrelated crap like music, empty jam jars, and other stuff that the viewer eventually bought after clicking my link.

As a way to build user trust and your brand, probably a pretty terrible idea. Before, a user knew: "Canonical has root and generally makes a good product". Now they know "Canonical has root and has a low enough opinion of my privacy and user experience that they are willing to install crapware-like features to support ubuntu".

I think this would drive me nuts. I can see it being useful as an option(preferably configurable to any web search), but by default? I know they are trying to monetize creatively but this seems very questionable to me.

My first thought is "leaking to the internet unintentionally can be very bad" which leads to "uhh it's encrypted right" which leads to "geez I assume, but how resistant is it to MITM and other SSL problems, does it fail safe or will it silently accept a bad cert to 'avoid complicating the UI' as everyone says?" and "are they intentionally or inadvertently logging any of this?", so on and so forth.

If they really feel that strongly about pushing this "feature" on their users, they should at least take the MS browser-ballot route and have a popup when you start a freshly-loaded ubuntu machine. "Would you like us to include amazon results in the lens? Click "No" to disable this feature".

Mark, a word of advice: "we have root" isn't something you should ever say. Those of us who know, already know. The people who don't are more likely to run for their tin-foil hats than feel comforted by their big brother's amicable intentions.

"Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already."

I think there's a difference between saying "we have access to install whatever malware we want on your system" and saying "we have designed the system to report all your search behavior to us." In the former case, I trust they wouldn't actually do that because it would be the end of them. In the latter case, I don't trust that they will not use or sell that information because selling that information has become normal business behavior.

So every time you search your computer what you are searching for goes to Ubuntu's servers? That seems like a terrible invasion of privacy.The fact that I trust them to deliver stable software doesn't mean that I would give Shuttleworth a live stream to everything I do on my computer.Goodbye Ubuntu.

I really hope that these funds go towards marketing people more than anything else, Ubuntu might start gaining market share and actually being able to push "features" like this without sounding like a malicious overlord. Ubuntu needs more than root to start selling all my information, there are actually laws in place (despite the lack of them) that would mean I'd at least have to agree to something, via the terms and conditions. I don't for one second believe they're not selling my information solely out of the goodness of their hearts, especially when they're willing to dress shit up as "scopes" and sell it to me as diamonds.

As a fundraiser it's a pretty good idea - I have some amazon affiliate links on the site for an app I wrote, and I'm amazed at how broadly amazon defines "purchased via your link and thus eligible for the affiliate program". The stuff I link to are phones, phone holders, gps units, obd2 readers, etc, but I often end up getting my affiliate kickbacks for completely unrelated crap like music, empty jam jars, and other stuff that the viewer eventually bought after clicking my link.

As a way to build user trust and your brand, probably a pretty terrible idea. Before, a user knew: "Canonical has root and generally makes a good product". Now they know "Canonical has root and has a low enough opinion of my privacy and user experience that they are willing to install crapware-like features to support ubuntu".

It doesn't sound like a big deal right now given the ease of removal, but I have to admit that the decision makes me a bit apprehensive about the future. This is the first time since I started with 8.04 on my desktop at home that I feel like I should catch up on some other distros again before my next reinstall. I don't like to see this sort of thing outside of the Software Center.

Well, if GNOME 3's your thing. For my part I think it's got a lot of the same usability issues that Unity has.

I've been using Kubuntu for the past 6 years or so. I like KDE okay. Thinking I might give SUSE or something a shot -- figure one of these days I'll get me an SSD and start tinkering with something new.

I don't really like this, and I'm glad it's easy to remove, but truth be told, unless Gabe makes games on Ubuntu feasible, I won't be affected. I think it should be a separate option only: search Amazon from your desktop, not at the same time as a local search. I really don't want "Monthly Budget.ods" or "Contacts.csv" to get searched for on Amazon (those are probably poor examples but you get the idea).

For me this brings up a question about selling my data in general.

I don't recall ever having seen a plain-English explanation in a TOU/TOS that says "We will make money off of YOUR information," from Facebook or any others.

Here in the litigious states of America, what are the chances of successfully suing, on any grounds, for that? I don't recall selling or otherwise releasing "my" information.

My primary gripe with the way that this has been implemented (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this), is it's inclusion within the home lens. The home lens should, in my opinion, be restricted to local results only. I don't want every single search in unity to be sent to Canonical/Amazon, and I would imagine that they wouldn't want to have their serveres burdened with so many trivial and obviously 'non-lead' search requests either (or are they mad?!).

Canonical should have (and may well eventually) implemented this as a seperate and distinct shopping lens. A lot of the furore could have been avoided had they done this. Personally, I don't mind commercial/shopping search results in the Music and Video lenses either, since these are lenses catered towards consumption and it's reasonable to expect that an end user searching for 'xyz' track/video would want to obtain 'xyz' track/video even if it isn't available locally. That said, it is worrying that (at the present time) the shopping lens is limited to a) a single vendor (namely Amazon) and b) a commercial vendor. I do hope that the 'shopping' lens will eventually serve up results from a wider gamut of commercial (Amazon as well as eBay*, Play, Zavvi, etc.), less traditional subscription based services (Magnatunes, Spotify, etc.) and non-commercial (e.g. Jamendo,VODO, etc.) vendors (all entirely legal of course).

I don't mind consumptive services being baked right into the OS UI, but it's all for naught if end users feel that they're getting a raw deal. Vendor lock-in such as this (although Amazon is usually very reasonable, and is in my experience frequently the cheapest) could well drive people back to the browser and price comparison services like Froogle/Google Products very swiftly indeed.

* Any stand-alone shopping lens view could even sub-divide results into 'buy now', 'auction' and 'subscription' type results. Just a thought.

xphantoman wrote:

Since most user of Ubuntu are computer geeks, there will be hack soon to complete remove this search result.

No need for a hack. The shopping lens can be removed just like any other unity lens as follows:

Not understanding the difference between "we install software" and "we are watching you"... well, watching ubuntu pile fail on fail, it pains me to remember I used to love them.

I would say that is more of a damnation of the user's stupidity than a fail on Ubuntu's part.

And the people complaining about the Amazon search are clearly people who don't have any clue how it all actually works. It's like complaining that your tax rate is going up when you have an accountant and have no clue what the difference between your tax rate and effective tax rate is or what it was before the hike. It's a lot of blather from people complaining just to complain.

After the abortion that was 11 I'm afraid nothing would shock me. It's pretty easy to see what they are trying to do (<cough>tablets<cough>) but literally the first thing I did was install the fallback to kill off that useless Unity desktop.

That said, this doesn't seem absurdly unreasonable for free software - frankly it seems unlikely that any cash they will make from this fairly unobtrusive feature is likely to make up for the bad PR though.

TINSTAAFL folks, this is why there will never be a "year of the Linux desktop" because with servers you can sell support like RH but on the desktop there is no way to make money with GPL. Shuttleworth should have went with BSD as his base, that way he could have kept his changes and actually made enough from selling copies to keep the lights on,, but with GPL there is simply no way to make money selling copies, only hardware or support, so they have to resort to this or tin cup begging.

Does this make the GPL bad? No it just means that while it works in SOME places it doesn't work in ALL places and the desktop is one of those where it just doesn't work. To make an OS that could compete with OSX and Windows you'd need to spend a good 100 million plus, as the glaring bugs like Pulse and graphics drivers getting hosed on update would have to go, you'd also have to do regression and bug testing, documentation, QA and QC, all this costs money that simply isn't there using the GPL model.

The only chance I see for Ubuntu is either get into the hardware business, ala Apple, or switch to BSD and hope they can stay afloat long enough to make enough changes to make it worth paying for. they have already tried the server support route and they just can't compete with RH, so its that or die. As we saw in the comments everyone will just apt get remove this while enjoying the millions Shuttleworth spent on the OS and without income coming in you can say goodbye to Canonical. It'll join Xandros and Linspire and mandriva on the dustbin of failed linux desktops.

Note that as of now the search queries are sent plaintext and can include NSFW images, may violate Amazon's TOS which states 'If you are under 18 you may use the Amazon Services only with the involvement of a parent or guardian', and it is unknown if data is stored and/or associated with your IP address. Basic privacy questions and issues have not been addressed.

If I search for a medical device, or a Quran, can a record of that search be subpoenaed by my insurance company or government, for example? What about a foreign government?

A good summary of these and other issues are here on Launchpad where multiple bugs have been filed against this.

I like using Ubuntu and won't switch distros over this, but it's quite heavy-handed and arrogant to do things this way. Mark needs to STFU, delay this 'feature' he fast-tracked, and hand this over to someone with basic PR skills to manage now. Affilliate links are no problem, but this isn't the right way to add them.

The only chance I see for Ubuntu is either get into the hardware business[...]or switch to BSD[...]

With raspberry pi released Ubuntu has a shot at doing this without having to form a hardware team from scratch. I'm actually amazed they haven't committed to supported the platform yet (according the Rpi website, at least). I can just imagine ordering a Ubuntu-pi device from Ubuntu directly, with a TV-optimized gui pre-configured and all that good stuff.

Since most user of Ubuntu are computer geeks, there will be hack soon to complete remove this search result.

I suspect the first thing for Ubuntu user after install the new OS is to remove this feature, Nothing to worry here.

Quote:

apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

RTFA

Read my last sentence. also. I like to call it a hack for anything require root access. How I use the word is my choice. Also, I was suspect there might be additional action to complete remove all traces if Ubuntu became bloatware platform starting with this article.

My immediate reaction is "Rage! How dare you infect the OS with adware!" But at least it's easy to remove. And this is just the direction things are headed.

Every computer you buy - pay for with your own good money - comes with a ton of garbage bloatware installed. Ubuntu at least is free.

Free software you download frequently comes with crap bundled. Eg. Java updates as part of the install want to add a stupid browser bar and swipe your search engine.

Android pretty much reports every move you make to Google. (I like Android but have no illusions about its profit mechanism.)

Two things about this do stand out though. The first is they're using local search to base ad links. We expect what we do online to be tracked; we don't expect what we do offline to be tracked. The second is Shuttleworth's defense makes him sound like an ass. Tech geeks do not make good PR people.

As for opt-in vs opt-out: let's face it, every single option you do not want and benefits the advertisers will always be opt-out. They know nobody would opt into it, so it has no value that way. This junk will always default to "on" and we will always have to catch it and get rid of it manually. Sucks but true.

As for agreeing to it: I guarantee it's in the EULA for the OS. Everything nowadays makes you agree to a massive block of fine print, and it will be in there.

Not understanding the difference between "we install software" and "we are watching you"... well, watching ubuntu pile fail on fail, it pains me to remember I used to love them.

I would say that is more of a damnation of the user's stupidity than a fail on Ubuntu's part.

And the people complaining about the Amazon search are clearly people who don't have any clue how it all actually works.

Unless there's a protection built into the system, which would be an immensely interesting detail and one that should be posted in the comments in lieu of insulting everyone, all we have is that Ubuntu claims they can be your trusted proxy with untrusted Amazon, without obligating them in any way to actually be trustworthy themselves.

Least-privilege does not cease to be desirable just because the guy who wants the master key promises to be good with it.

Not understanding the difference between "we install software" and "we are watching you"... well, watching ubuntu pile fail on fail, it pains me to remember I used to love them.

I would say that is more of a damnation of the user's stupidity than a fail on Ubuntu's part.

And the people complaining about the Amazon search are clearly people who don't have any clue how it all actually works.

Unless there's a protection built into the system, which would be an immensely interesting detail and one that should be posted in the comments in lieu of insulting everyone, all we have is that Ubuntu claims they can be your trusted proxy with untrusted Amazon, without obligating them in any way to actually be trustworthy themselves.

Least-privilege does not cease to be desirable just because the guy who wants the master key promises to be good with it.

That really is the crux of it. Searching one's computer from the home lens implies Spotlight-like convenience (I wouldn't know, haven't bothered with Unity myself). But I don't think it's a stretch to say even the greenest of green *buntu users would be comfortable with every search going out find something on amazon.

Though... it sure would be funny to have some metrics about the sort of file names people keep on disk

The switch from a proper mouse & keyboard desktop UI to the tablet UI (ie, Unity) has already reduced the chances of me installing Ubuntu again. These two revelations (that they will send your search queries through Amazon to introduce spam into your search results, and the implicit threat of "we have root"), however, GUARANTEE that I will never install Ubuntu ever again.

A static Amazon ad, that is NOT connected to the 'Net and not doing ANYTHING other than displaying, on the sidebar of the installer I'd be fine with, same with putting it in the search engines list of the default Web browser. This, however, crosses a line...

As a fundraiser it's a pretty good idea - I have some amazon affiliate links on the site for an app I wrote, and I'm amazed at how broadly amazon defines "purchased via your link and thus eligible for the affiliate program". The stuff I link to are phones, phone holders, gps units, obd2 readers, etc, but I often end up getting my affiliate kickbacks for completely unrelated crap like music, empty jam jars, and other stuff that the viewer eventually bought after clicking my link.

As a way to build user trust and your brand, probably a pretty terrible idea. Before, a user knew: "Canonical has root and generally makes a good product". Now they know "Canonical has root and has a low enough opinion of my privacy and user experience that they are willing to install crapware-like features to support ubuntu".

A "Session" begins when a customer clicks through a Special Link on your site to the Amazon Site and ends upon the first to occur of the following: (x) 24 hours (except in the case of Special Links to the myhabit.com site, in which case 30 days) elapses from that click; (y) the customer places an order for a Product that is not a Digital Product; or (z) the customer follows a Special Link to the Amazon Site that is not your Special Link.

As for agreeing to it: I guarantee it's in the EULA for the OS. Everything nowadays makes you agree to a massive block of fine print, and it will be in there.

No such thing, this is Ubuntu Linux which does not have a traditional EULA. There are various licences for free & non-free packages, but you don't have to 'click through' any kind of unilateral terms to install and use it.